People with severe nasal or skin allergies may have a higher suicide risk than the allergy-free, a new study suggests - although the reasons are not yet clear.
Reviewing medical records for more than 27,000 suicide victims, Danish researchers found that just over one per cent had ever been hospitalised for severe nasal allergies or eczema. That compared with 0.8 per cent among nearly 468,000 adults studied for comparison.
When the researchers weighed other factors - like people's incomes and history of mental health disorders - those treated for severe allergies had a one-third higher risk of suicide than people with no history of allergies.
While that difference sounds large, the risk to any one person with serious allergies would still be quite small